The ‘Inside Districts’ series launched in April 2020 is a one-of-its-kind attempt to capture the experiences of district and Block-level officials, panchayat functionaries, beneficiaries, and frontline workers, on their challenges and best practices.

This interview was conducted with a Teacher in Satara, Maharashtra in Hindi on 3 March 2021, and has been translated.

Q: Have schools reopened now?

Teacher: The schools have reopened now. Precautions are being taken. It is compulsory for school staff, including teachers, to get an RT-PCR test for COVID-19 and submit the report to the school administration.

Masks and social distancing are essential for students in the classroom.

Q: Has there been an impact on the learning of students because of the closure of schools last year?

Teacher: The lockdown and subsequent closure of schools has impacted students. They are not able to sit and concentrate in the classroom. Children are having trouble in understanding what we are teaching. They are not getting the basic concepts.

Q: How are you going to measure what students have learned online during the lockdown?

Teacher: For this, we were sending test papers on WhatsApp every week. However, now that the schools have reopened, we realise that students are having trouble answering the test paper.

As of now, we have not received any instructions from the government regarding remedial classes.